Nothing as individual or as
new has been produced since the first novels of Tolstoy. His work owes
nothing to its predecessors; it stands apart and alone. It, therefore,
obtains more than an artistic success, it causes a real revolution.
Gorky was born of humble people, at Nizhni-Novgorod, in 1868 or
1869,--he does not know which--and was early left an orphan. He was
apprenticed to a shoemaker, but ran away, a sedentary life not being to
his taste. He left an engraver's in the same manner, and then went to
work with a painter of _ikoni_, or holy pictures. He is next found to
be a cook's boy, then an assistant to a gardener. He tried life in
these diverse ways, and not one of them pleased him. Until his
fifteenth year, he had only had the time to learn to read a little; his
grandfather taught him to read a prayer-book in the old Slav dialect.
He retained from his first studies only a distaste for anything printed
until the time when, cook's boy on board a steam-boat, he was initiated
by the chief cook into more attractive reading matter. Gogol, Glebe
Ouspenski, Dumas _pere_ were revelations to him. His imagination took
fire; he was seized with a "fierce desire" for instruction.
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